Turn a spare USB keyboard into a soundboard & stream deck

A stream deck gives you 15 buttons for around €150. A used USB keyboard gives you 60+ keys for €10 — if your software can tell your keyboards apart. Here's how that works and how to set it up in a few minutes.

The problem with hotkey soundboards

Most soundboards bind sounds to hotkeys like Ctrl+F5 on your main keyboard. That breaks down fast: your game already uses those keys, you trigger sounds by accident mid-match, and you can only remember a handful of combos anyway.

The fix is a second, dedicated keyboard: every key on it triggers a sound or an action, while your main keyboard behaves completely normally. No modifier combos, no conflicts, and each key can hold its own sound — a full board of 60+ instantly reachable triggers.

How SoundLord tells your keyboards apart

Windows normally merges all keyboards into one input stream, so ordinary software has no idea which board a keystroke came from. SoundLord reads keystrokes at the device level instead, so every press is tagged with the keyboard it came from. That means:

• No drivers — nothing is installed at the system level, and no admin rights are needed.
• Device filtering — keys from the soundboard keyboard trigger sounds and are swallowed; your main keyboard is untouched.
• Works globally — triggers fire in-game, in Discord, in the browser, without alt-tabbing.

Setup in three steps

1. Plug in any USB keyboard. A €10 used office keyboard works exactly as well as a mechanical one — there is no special hardware requirement.
2. Select it in SoundLord. The app lists all connected keyboards; pick the one that should act as the soundboard.
3. Drag sounds onto keys. Drop audio files from Explorer straight onto keys, or assign from the built-in library. Per-key volume, speed, loop and fade settings are one click away.

It's a stream deck too, not just a soundboard

This is the part most people miss. A soundboard key that only plays audio is half a key. In SoundLord every key can also — or instead — carry an action, and that is the moment a €10 keyboard starts doing the job of a €150 stream deck. Actions fire globally, so they work while you're in a game, in Discord or in a browser, and a key can hold a sound and an action at the same time: one press plays the airhorn and switches your OBS scene.

OBS control

• Switch scene — optionally auto-switching back the moment you release the key, so a "BRB" or reaction cam is a hold, not two presses.
• Screenshot — grab the current output without alt-tabbing.
• Start / stop recording and mute / unmute your OBS audio.
• The key face shows a live OBS indicator, so you can see the state at a glance.

Launchers & shortcuts

• Launch an app or file — pick the .exe (or a shortcut) and the key renders that program's real icon, exactly like a stream deck's LCD button.
• Open a link or folder — your dashboard, your clips folder, your donation page, one press.
• Switch profile — swap the entire board layout (gaming / streaming / podcast) in one press.

Audio & media control

• Media keys — play/pause, next, previous and mute for Spotify or any other player, system-wide, even on a keyboard that has no media keys of its own.
• Volume duck — hold the key and everything drops to 30 % so you can talk over it; release and it comes straight back up.
• Master volume up / down in 5 % steps.
• Kill sounds — the panic key. Stops every playing sound instantly, and it still fires when the board is muted.
• DJ mode cycle — flip the spacebar's stop behaviour (break / mute / off) hands-free.
• Mic forward toggle — turn the "send sounds into my mic" routing on and off mid-call.
• Random sound — one key, a random clip from your library. Dangerous. Fun.
• Set pitch / pitch reset — jump the global pitch to a stored value and snap back to normal.

Getting the sounds into Discord & OBS

To make your sounds audible for everyone in voice chat, route them through a free virtual audio cable — that's a one-time, 5-minute setup. We wrote a separate step-by-step guide for it: How to play soundboard sounds through your mic (VB-CABLE setup).

Cost comparison

A Stream Deck MK.2 costs about €150 for 15 buttons. A used USB keyboard costs €5–15 for 60+ keys, and SoundLord is a one-time lifetime licence — no subscription. If you mainly want sound triggers plus app/OBS shortcuts, the keyboard route gives you four times the keys for a tenth of the price.